"Nyerat atawa Sakarat!"

Nyerat atawa Sakarat is by all means not English, nor Indonesian. How can English ever allow a palatal nasal /ny/ in its inventory of consonants? No way. English simply doesn't have it. Period. So, nyerat atawa sakarat is obviously not English. It's a saying from one the ethnic languages spoken in the western part of Indonesia. Can you guess what that is? Let me give you a hint. The language is predicted to be wiped out from the map in the next fifty years according to research. In any case, the language I'm talking about is my mother tongue, Sundanese. So, some time in the (near) future it is likely that I won't get to communicate with the people in my hometown using the language I'm speaking now. How sad and pathetic!

The saying is not something brand new. I'd say it's most likely a literal translation from the English saying "publish or perish". Recall that Sundanese, to the best of my knowledge, was well-known for its spoken culture, not the written one. In other words, the saying is not peculiar to Sundanese. I knew the English counterpart long before the Sundanese one popped into my head. Despite its great lesson out of it, nothing sticks in my head. It's just a saying. Nothing special about it. I knew the saying and have probably heard of it over and over but it simply slipped my mind. I don't think I'd be able to retrieve it when people ask me anything about it. Just a passive entry.

The Sundanese saying, on the flip side, really touched my consciousness, teased my mind and provoked my thought. I heard it the first time from my writing professor, way back when I was in college. The professor is actually a prolific writer whose writings often appear in local and national newspaper. He is Prof. Chaedar Alwasilah. Anyway, with that saying he kind of provoked us to start writing or else you'll be dying. You know, as a scholar or an educated person, there is no other way of significantly contributing to the wider society or general public but spreading what you know and believe through either speeches or writings. Because I don't think I'm a great speaker, let alone an influential orator (hopefully someday), I opt writing over speaking. That's why the saying really moved me. I felt a sort of mounting sensation. It was like a new spirit lurking behind me saying "Eri, write, write and write." I started writing since then. At least, I attempted to.

I set up a handful set of personal goals in terms of writing. For instance, I have to post something on Kompasiana every single day, which sounds overly ambitious and a little bit unrealistic. Another goal that I have is I need to get one of my papers published in an international journal this year and get my second comprehensive paper done this Spring semester. But, they have yet to materialize till now. I don't know why. I guess, time will tell. I still have the time anyway. I sometimes say to myself  I can't write, which is the very wrong thing to do. Or, I make countless excuses like "I'm busy", "I don't have enough time to write", "I have no idea what to write" and other things of that sort.

One of the de-motivating factors to really productively write is the professor's statement about when he actually started to write. When I asked him of that, he spontaneously replied, "when I was in the U.S." That's why I said to myself that I would start writing by the time I'm in the U.S. But, I'm here now. So, there is no way of making excuses. Just write (and publish), Eri!!!